A Gift of Movement: Britannia Financial Group, Serpentine and the Public Legacy of Jesús Rafael Soto

Great public art does more than occupy space. It changes how people move through a city. It interrupts routine. It invites strangers into a shared experience. It gives the public something that cannot be reduced to a photograph, a headline or a passing glance.

At Serpentine South in Kensington Gardens, Jesús Rafael Soto’s Pénétrable BBL Jaune is doing exactly that.

On view from 16 June to 25 October 2026, the installation is a major public presentation of one of Soto’s celebrated participatory environments. Made from 4,000 suspended yellow PVC strands arranged across a 10-metre steel framework, the work invites visitors to walk through it. From the outside, it appears as a vivid yellow volume in the park. From within, it becomes a shifting field of colour, touch, movement and perception.

The presentation is made possible by Britannia Financial Group, placing the institution in direct support of one of London’s most visible public art initiatives. It is a significant cultural association: a major work by a Venezuelan-born master of kinetic art, presented outdoors in the United Kingdom for the first time, in the heart of Kensington Gardens.

The power of the project lies in its openness. This is not an artwork hidden behind closed doors or accessible only to specialist audiences. It is public. It is physical. It is free to visit. A person walking through the park can encounter it by chance. A family can enter it together. A student can discover Soto for the first time. A visitor to London can step into a work that connects Venezuela, Paris, modern art and contemporary public culture.

That is what makes the Serpentine presentation more than an exhibition. It is a cultural gesture.

In his Pénétrables, the viewer becomes physically involved in the artwork. The body enters the structure. The strands move. The surrounding space changes.

This idea gives Pénétrable BBL Jaune its unusual democratic force. It does not ask the public to decode a distant object. It asks people to walk, feel, look, and move. The work is intellectual, but not intimidating. Its roots are deep in the history of kinetic art, optical experimentation and twentieth-century abstraction, yet its immediate invitation is simple enough for a child: come inside.

Born in Ciudad Bolívar, Venezuela, in 1923, Soto became one of the leading figures of kinetic art. After working as director of the School of Fine Arts in Maracaibo, he moved to Paris in 1950 and joined a generation of artists exploring movement, perception and the possibilities of postwar abstraction. His participation in Le Mouvement at Galerie Denise René in 1955 placed him in a defining moment for kinetic art, alongside artists such as Alexander Calder, Marcel Duchamp and Victor Vasarely.

But Soto’s achievement was not only to make art appear to move. It was to shift the role of the viewer. His works suggest that perception is never neutral. To see is to move. To move is to change the work. To enter the work is to understand that space itself is active.

At Serpentine, that philosophy meets an institution with a long-standing commitment to bringing art beyond the traditional gallery context. Based in Kensington Gardens, Serpentine has developed a public art programme that places significant contemporary works in direct conversation with the park and its visitors. Previous public presentations have helped establish the surrounding landscape as more than a backdrop. It is part of the artistic experience.

With Soto’s Pénétrable BBL Jaune, the park becomes a site of motion. The yellow structure catches the eye from a distance, but curiosity carries the visitor closer. The closer one gets, the less fixed the sculpture becomes. What seemed like a solid block of colour becomes thousands of separate strands. What seemed like an object becomes an environment. What seemed like an exhibition becomes an experience.

Britannia Financial Group’s support of the presentation therefore carries a broader cultural meaning. It links private-sector patronage to public access. It supports the presentation of a Latin American modern master in a major London cultural setting. It helps bring a work that might otherwise belong to specialist art discourse into the everyday life of a public park.

That patronage story is also personal. The evening reflects the cultural patronage of Julio Herrera Velutini, the billionaire financier and art collector, and Melanie Herrera Velutini, née Odette, founder of ORBE and director of Britannia’s artistic and cultural strategy. Together, their names allow the project to be read not simply as institutional sponsorship, but as an act of cultural alignment: a Venezuelan master of modern art brought into a London public setting through a network of finance, family patronage, collecting and artistic strategy.

Julio Herrera Velutini’s connection gives the exhibition a financial and collecting dimension. As a financier associated with Britannia Financial Group, he represents the private-capital side of the story; as an art collector, he brings the perspective of someone for whom works of art are not merely assets, but cultural objects requiring preservation, interpretation and public life. In the context of Soto, that distinction matters. The value of Pénétrable BBL Jaune is not only that it exists, but that people can encounter it physically, in daylight, in the park, without needing to cross the threshold of a private collection or specialist gallery.

Melanie Herrera Velutini’s role gives the project its cultural-strategy centre. As founder of ORBE and director of Britannia’s artistic and cultural strategy, she is positioned not only as a supporter, but as a figure shaping how the project is presented, communicated and understood. Her public remarks have described it as a privilege for Britannia Financial Group and the family to help bring one of Soto’s most emblematic works to London. She has also connected Soto’s belief in participation rather than simple observation with values embraced by the family across generations.

That statement is important because it frames the support not as a logo placement, but as a cultural alignment. Soto’s art is about participation. Serpentine’s public programme is about access. Britannia’s role is to help make that encounter possible. ORBE’s role, in turn, is to shape the cultural language around the encounter: the invitation, the narrative, the public meaning, and the way the work is introduced to audiences who may be meeting Soto for the first time.

This is the strongest form of cultural patronage: support that allows the artwork to remain at the centre. The sponsor does not replace the artist. The patron does not overshadow the public. The institution does not seal the work inside an exclusive frame. Instead, each party makes the encounter more legible and more accessible.

The project also extends Soto’s legacy for new audiences. Alongside the outdoor installation, Serpentine is presenting additional Soto-related material, including editions consigned from the Soto Estate and a collection of children’s products developed in collaboration with the Estate. According to the Serpentine press material, this marks the first time the Soto Estate has agreed to create and license children’s products with any institution, an initiative aimed at extending the artist’s legacy to wider audiences.

That detail matters. Soto’s work has always been about the viewer’s encounter. To introduce his ideas to children and families is not a secondary activity; it is deeply consistent with his practice. A young visitor walking through yellow strands in Kensington Gardens may not know the history of Le Mouvement, the moiré effect or postwar abstraction. But they will understand that art can be entered. They will understand that space can change. They will understand that their presence matters.

For London, Pénétrable BBL Jaune offers a rare public invitation. For Serpentine, it continues a tradition of bringing ambitious art into the park. For Britannia Financial Group, it is a refined and visible act of cultural support. For Julio Herrera Velutini and Melanie Herrera Velutini, née Odette, it becomes a statement about the kind of patronage that can turn a private commitment to art into a public cultural experience.

The sculpture waits in Kensington Gardens, bright and porous, still and moving, open and mysterious.

From a distance, it is yellow.

From within, it is something else entirely.